Basket-style carriers are commonly employed to package beverage bottles. They normally include a central handle panel located between spaced parallel side panels, a bottom panel connected to the side panels and end panels connected to both the side panels and the handle panel. Dividers extending from the handle panel to the side panels are often included to provide individual cells for the bottles. The packaged bottles typically extend up beyond the side and end panels so that substantial upper portions of the bottles are visible. This is deemed beneficial since a distinctively shaped bottle known to be associated with the beverage company can thus be more readily identified.
Typically, basket-style carriers of this type are fabricated from collapsed carriers which have been formed from blanks. The carriers are loaded either by dropping bottles into place after the bottom panel has been formed or by moving an opened carrier over the bottles and then forming the bottom panel. Packaging machines designed to load and form the finished basket carrier package are employed to rapidly carry out these operations.
Basket carriers are conventionally made with the end panels at right angles to the side panels, giving a squared appearance. This arrangement also makes the gluing process simpler. Although such basket carriers are satisfactory from a performance point of view, it would be desirable from a marketing point of view to be able to package bottles in a basket-style carrier so that the end panels closely follow the contour of the end bottles. The resulting rounded corners not only would show off the shape of the bottles to greater advantage but would provide an additional degree of integrity to the carrier as a result of the corners more tightly holding the end bottles in place.
An object of the invention, therefore, is to provide a basket carrier having rounded corners which meet the desired goals noted above. Another object is to provide such a carrier which can be glued by means of a flat gluing process. The carrier must also possess adequate strength and rigidity, and preferably should be produced from a nested web arrangement to minimize the required amount of paperboard.